Rushdie has been married four times. He was married to his first
wife Clarissa Luard from 1976 to 1987 and fathered a son, Zafar.
His second wife was the American novelist Marianne Wiggins; they were married in 1988
and divorced in 1993. His third wife, from
1997 to 2004, was Elizabeth West; they have a son, Milan. In 2004,
he married the Indian American actress and supermodel Padma Lakshmi, the host of the American
reality-television show Top Chef.
The marriage ended on 2 July 2007 with Lakshmi indicating that it
was her desire to end the marriage. In the Bollywood press, he was,
in 2008, romantically linked to the Indian model Riya Sen, with whom he was otherwise a friend. In
response to the media speculation about their friendship, she
simply stated "I think when you are Salman Rushdie, you must get
bored with people who always want to talk to you about
literature."

In 1999, Rushdie had an operation to correct a "tendon condition" that, according to him, was making
it increasingly difficult for him to open his eyes. "If I hadn't
had an operation, in a couple of years from now I wouldn't have
been able to open my eyes at all," he said.

Career

Major literary work

His first novel, Grimus, a
part-science fiction tale, was
generally ignored by the public and literary critics. His next
novel, Midnight's
Children, catapulted him to literary notability. It
significantly shaped the course that Indian writing in English would
follow over the next decade, and is regarded by many as one of the
great books of the last 100 years. This work won the 1981 Booker Prize and, in 1993 and 2008, was
awarded the Best of the Bookers as the best novel to have received
the prize during its first 25 and 40 years. Midnight's
Children follows the life of a child, born at the stroke of
midnight as India gained its independence, who is endowed with
special powers and a connection to other children born at the dawn
of a new and tumultuous age in the history of the Indian
sub-continent and the
birth of the modern nation of India. The character of Saleem
Sinai has been compared to Rushdie.

Rushdie
wrote a non-fiction book about Nicaragua in the 1980s, The
Jaguar Smile (1987). The book has a political focus
and is based on his first hand experiences and research at the
scene of Sandinista political
experiments.

In 2006,
Rushdie joined the Emory University faculty as Distinguished Writer in Residence for
one month a year for the next five years. Though he enjoys
writing, Salman Rushdie says that he would have become an actor if
his writing career had not been successful. Even from early
childhood, he dreamed of appearing in Hollywood movies (which he
would later realize in his frequent cameo appearances).

The Satanic Verses and the fatwā

The publication of The Satanic
Verses in September 1988 caused immediate controversy in
the Islamic world because of what was
perceived as an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad. The title refers to a disputed Muslim tradition that is related in the book.
According
to this tradition, Muhammad (Mahound in the
book) added verses (sura) to the
Qur'an accepting three goddesses who used to
be worshipped in Mecca as divine
beings. According to the legend, Muhammad later revoked the
verses, saying the devil tempted him to
utter these lines to appease the Meccans (hence the "Satanic"
verses). However, the narrator reveals to the reader that these
disputed verses were actually from the mouth of the Archangel Gibreel. The book
was banned in many countries with large Muslim
communities.

On 14 February 1989, a fatwā
requiring Rushdie's execution was proclaimed on Radio Tehran by
AyatollahRuhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran at the time,
calling the book "blasphemous against
Islam" (chapter IV of the book depicts the character of an Imam in exile who returns to
incite revolt from the people of his country with no regard for
their safety). A bounty was offered for Rushdie's death, and he was
thus forced to live under police protection for years afterward.
On 7 March
1989, the United Kingdom and Iran broke
diplomatic
relations over the Rushdie controversy.

The publication of the book and the fatwā sparked violence
around the world, with bookstores being firebombed. Muslim communities in several
nations in the West held public rallies in which copies of the book
were burned. Several people associated
with translating or publishing the book were attacked, seriously
injured, and even killed. Many more people died in riots in
Third World countries.

Hardliners in Iran have continued to reaffirm the death sentence. In early 2005,
Khomeini's fatwā was reaffirmed by Iran's spiritual
leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards have
declared that the death sentence on him is still valid. Iran has
rejected requests to withdraw the fatwā on the basis that
only the person who issued it may withdraw it, and the person who
issued it - Ayatollah Khomeini - has been dead since 1989.

Rushdie has reported that he still receives a "sort of Valentine's card" from Iran each year on 14
February letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to
kill him. He said, "It's reached the point where it's a piece of
rhetoric rather than a real threat." Despite the threats
on Rushdie, he has publicly said that his family has never been
threatened and that his mother (who lived in Pakistan during the later years of her life) even received
outpourings of support.

A former bodyguard to Rushdie, Ron Evans, planned to publish a book
recounting the behaviour of the author during the time he was in
hiding. Evans claimed that Rushdie tried to profit financially from
the fatwa and was suicidal, but Rushdie dismissed the book
as a "bunch of lies" and took legal action against Ron Evans, his
co-author and their publisher. On 26 August 2008 Rushdie received
an apology at the High Court in London from all three
parties.

Failed assassination attempt and Hezbollah's comments

On 3
August 1989, while Mustafa Mahmoud
Mazeh was priming a book bomb loaded with RDX explosives in a hotel in Paddington, Central London, the
bomb exploded prematurely, taking out two floors of the hotel and
killing Mazeh.A previously unknown Lebanese group, the Organization of the Mujahidin of Islam,
said he died preparing an attack "on the apostate Rushdie".There is a shrine in
Tehran's Behesht-e
Zahra cemetery for Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh that says he was
"Martyred in London, 3 August 1989. The first martyr to die
on a mission to kill Salman Rushdie." Mazeh's mother was invited to
relocate to Iran, and the Islamic World Movement of Martyrs'
Commemoration built his shrine in the cemetery that holds thousands
of Iranian soldiers slain in the Iran–Iraq War. During the 2006
Jyllands-Posten
Muhammad cartoons controversy, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared that "If there
had been a Muslim to carry out Imam Khomeini's fatwā
against the renegade Salman Rushdie, this rabble who insult our
Prophet Mohammed in Denmark, Norway and France would not have dared
to do so. I am sure there are millions of Muslims who are ready to
give their lives to defend our prophet's honour and we have to be
ready to do anything for that." James Phillips of the Heritage Foundation testified before the
United States Congress that a
"March 1989" (sic) explosion in Britain was a Hezbollah attempt to assassinate Rushdie which
failed when a bomb exploded prematurely, killing a Hezbollah
activist in London.

International Gorillay

In 1990,
soon after the publication of The Satanic Verses, a
Pakistani film was released in
which Rushdie was depicted plotting to cause the downfall of
Pakistan by opening a chain of casinos and discos in the
country. The film was popular with Pakistani audiences, and
it "presents Rushdie as a Rambo-like
figure pursued by four Pakistani guerrillas". The British Board of Film
Classification refused to allow it a certificate, as "it was
felt that the portrayal of Rushdie might qualify as criminal
libel, causing a breach of the peace as
opposed to merely tarnishing his reputation." This move effectively
banned the film in Britain outright. However, two months later,
Rushdie himself wrote to the board, saying that while he thought
the film "a distorted, incompetent piece of trash", he would not
sue if it were released. He later said, "If that film had been
banned, it would have become the hottest video in town: everyone
would have seen it". While the film was a massive hit in Pakistan,
it went virtually unnoticed in the West. He has said that there was
one legitimately funny part of the movie, his character torturing a
Pakistani fighter by reading from his book The Satanic
Verses.

Knighthood

Rushdie was awarded a knighthood for
services to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours on 16 June
2007. He remarked, "I am thrilled and humbled to receive this great
honour, and am very grateful that my work has been recognized in
this way." In response to his knighthood, many nations with Muslim
majorities protested. Parliamentarians of
several of these countries condemned the action, and Iran and
Pakistan called in their British envoys to protest formally.
Controversial condemnation issued by Pakistan's Religious Affairs
Minister Muhammad Ijaz-ul-Haq
was in turn rebuffed by former Prime MinisterBenazir Bhutto. Ironically, their respective
fathers Zia-ul-Haq and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had been earlier
portrayed in Rushdie's novel Shame. Mass demonstrations
against Rushdie's knighthood took place in Pakistan and Malaysia. Several called publicly for his death. Some
non-Muslims were disappointed by Rushdie's knighthood, believing
that the writer did not merit such an honour.

Al-Qaeda has condemned the Rushdie honour.
The Al-Qaeda deputy Ayman
al-Zawahiri is quoted as saying in an audio recording that
Britain's award for Indian-born Rushdie was "an insult to Islam",
and it was planning "a very precise response."

Religious and political beliefs

Rushdie came from a Shi'ite Muslim family
but says that he was never really religious. In 1990, in the "hope
that it would reduce the threat of Muslims acting on the fatwa to
kill him," he issued a statement in which he claimed "he had
renewed his Muslim faith, had repudiated the attacks on Islam in
his novel and was committed to working for better understanding of
the religion across the world." But later said that he was only
"pretending".

His books often focus on the role of religion in society and
conflicts between faiths and between the religious and those of no
faith.

Rushdie advocates the application of higher criticism, pioneered during the late
19th century. Rushdie calls for a reform in Islam in a guest
opinion piece printed in The
Washington Post and The
Times in mid-August 2005. Excerpts from his speech:

In 2006, Rushdie stated that he supported comments by the
then-Leader of the House
of CommonsJack Straw, who criticised the wearing of
the niqab (a veil that covers all of the face
except the eyes). Rushdie stated that his three sisters would never
wear the veil. He said, "I think the battle against the veil has
been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women,
so in that sense I'm completely on [Straw's] side."

Rushdie continues to come under fire from much of the British
academic establishment for his political views. The Marxist critic Terry
Eagleton, a former admirer of Rushdie's work, attacked him for
his positions, saying he "cheered on the Pentagon's criminal ventures in Iraq and
Afghanistan". However, he subsequently apologized for having
misrepresented Rushdie's views.

At an appearance at 92nd Street Y,
Rushdie expressed his view on copyright when answering a question
whether he had considered copyright law a barrier (or impediment)
to free speech.

Essays

" Imagine There Is No Heaven." , extracted contribution
from Letters to the Six Billionth World Citizen, a UN sponsored
publication in English by Uitgeverij Podium, Amsterdam.
The Guardian, 16 October
1999.